Editorial: Microbial Secondary Metabolites: Recent Developments and Technological Challenges

Microbial Secondary Metabolites Production and Strain Improvement

Microbial secondary metabolites are compounds produced mainly by actinomycetes and fungi, usually late in the growth cycle (idiophase). Although antibiotics are the best known secondary metabolites (SM), there are others with an enormous range of other biological activities mainly in fields like: pharmaceutical and cosmetics, food, agriculture and farming. These include compounds with anti-infl...

Editorial: recent developments in mixture models

Recent developments in the area of mixture models are introduced, reviewed and discussed. The paper introduces this special issue on mixture models, which touches upon a diversity of developments which were the topic of a recent conference on mixture models, taken place in Hamburg, July 2001. These developments include issues in nonparametric maximum likelihood theory, the number of components ...

Editorial: Petroleum Microbial Biotechnology: Challenges and Prospects

Phytoestrogens: recent developments

Phytoestrogens are polyphenolic non-steroidal plant compounds with estrogen like activity exerted through estrogen receptors. These receptors are distributed in several tissues such as male and female reproductive systems, bones, cardiovascular and central nervous systems. These natural phenolic compounds include isoflavonoids, flavonoids, lignans and stilbenes. Isoflavonoids are the most studi...

Microbial conversion of steroid compounds: recent developments

Steroid compounds can be ranked among the most widely marketed products from the pharmaceutical industry. Highly specific reactions are required to produce functionalized compounds with therapeutic use and commercial value. The complexity of steroid molecules renders the use of biocatalysts particularly interesting, due to the high regioand stereo-selectivity of the reactions to be performed. T...